"Drones are all over my brain". The horror we are inflicting on Pakistanis. Where is our humanity?

[Luminous Animal]

"Do you remember 9/11? Do you remember what it felt like right after? I was in New York on 9/11. I remember people crying in the streets. People were afraid about what might happen next. People didn’t know if there would be another attack. There was tension in the air. This is what it is like. It is a continuous tension, a feeling of continuous uneasiness. We are scared. You wake up with a start to every noise."

"“God knows whether they’ll strike us again or not. But they’re always surveying us, they’re always over us, and you never know when they’re going to strike and attack.”

"“Everyone is scared all the time. When we’re sitting together to have a meeting, we’re scared there might be a strike. When you can hear the drone circling in the sky, you think it might strike you. We’re always scared. We always have this fear in our head.”

"We do not come out of our villages because it’s very dangerous to go out anywhere. . . . In past we used to participate in activities like wedding gatherings [and] different kinds of jirgas, different kinds of funerals. . . .We used to go to different houses for condolences, and there were all kinds of activities in the past and we used to participate. But now it’s a risk to go to any place or participate in any activities."

...

“We do not sit like this, like friends.” This does not happen anymore because people are afraid, “since they usually attack people when they sit in gatherings.”


http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/09/25/drones-are-all-over-my-brain-how-the-us-drone-war-is-an-ongoing-nightmare-for-pakistanis/

[HiPointDem]

1. kr

[99th_Monkey]

2. The drone strikes are one of Obama's biggest mistakes, just ahead

of giving Monsanto the keys to the FDA to kill Americans, and permanently
ruining hundreds of thousands of American's lives with his War on Drugs i.e.
esp. related to Cannabis "crimes".

I HATE that "my candidate" is doing these egregious acts, crimes against
humanity in my book; but sadly this is the world we are living in today.

[Luminous Animal]

4. The drone strikes are our collective responsibility and outright crime.

It's not "sadly" that we live in this world. It is gross anger inducing injustice that we remain mute and thus complicit in this horror that we perpetrate. And we are subjecting human beings to this all over the world.

We. Americans. All over the world are creating day in and day out suffering to hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings.

[99th_Monkey]

5. I have no argument with anything you are saying ...

including that we are all complicit.

However, I know my own Hellish sadness,
as my emotional experience, not yours.

You are not in a position to know my emotions
better than I know them myself.. just saying.

You are welcome to have your experiences as
well, and I promise not to try to talk you out
of them.

[Luminous Animal]

11. Apparently, I misunderstood, "sadly this is the world we are living in" to mean

it is a regrettable fact for which we have no control.

I DO understand the hellish emotional experience. And I do wonder how individual citizens who lived in aggressive military regimes such as ours managed their dark hours. My daughter (when she was 13) watched the Iraq "shock and awe", she knelt at my feet and hugged my knees crying. Sometimes I wish I could hug someone's knees and cry.

[99th_Monkey]

13. Thank you for your understanding

I understand how you might have read it that way, because there was
just a touch of that energy in my post, I admit it. The lie is so damned
convincing sometimes, I get a bit sucked into it. Thanks for calling me
out on it.

Yet I also know that it is that very thought, that very imagination, i.e.
that I/we have no control, that is The Big Lie that keeps the whole murderous
greed-machine humming along with way too little resistance.

That is a very moving picture, of you with your daughter, with which I
also resonate.

[LeftyMom]

9. Comparing drone strikes and weed being illegal is ridiculous.

[99th_Monkey]

15. I wasn't "comparing drone strikes with weed being illegal"

I laid out my biggest three disappointments with Obama's policies,
the first and most egregious of which is the drone strikes as discussed
in the OP.

Me thinks you pick too many nits.

[joshcryer]

20. Campaign promise kept.

[msongs]

3. riots over a movie. obama's drones? not so much nt

[Amak8]

6. Didn't their leadership just offer $100K for the Islam filmmaker's death?

And paranoid terrorists are not getting together at wedding. Those are not getting blow'd up.

[Bonobo]

8. Who is "they"?

Oh yeah, them.

Them A-rabs. Or something...

[Luminous Animal]

16. Wedding participants are getting blow'd up. Children gather wood

are getting blow'd up. Families attending funerals are getting bloow'd up. People shopping for dinner are getting blow'd up.

U.S. pundits like Ann Coulter advocate obliterating the populations of Muslim countries (and we've spent billions of dollars doing just that)...

George Bush advocated a Christian version of Gog and Magog to enlist France in his vengeful apocalyptic fantasy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush

[sabrina 1]

19. How many innocent Muslims in Iraq did Bush and his gang of war criminals kill?

And then maybe you can tell us how much money we spent killing them, and what would be even better, WHY were they killed, tortured, raped, robbed and locked up without charges for years on end with no access to any criminal justice system?

So some moron fundy, (remember our Fundies calling for the deaths of innocent Muslims, Pat Robertson eg, and right now we have Elected officials calling for the assasssination of an Editor and Journalist of an International News Organization. Do you know how the rest of the world views US?

Put it this way, considering the slaughter of innocents this country is responsible for, no one here has the moral authority to be pointing fingers anywhere else until we start prosecuting the War Criminals from the Bush years.

Welcome to DU, btw.

[disidoro01]

26. You are wrong

Bush's behavior does not give a pass to Obama to continue doing what he has done for 4 years. This nonsense is why we struggle to affect change. Yes I am very comfortable saying I have the moral authority to say Obama is wrong and this needs to stop. Just remember if we prosecute Bush there is no choice but to do the same to Obama. The blood of civilians is on both of their hands.

[Bonobo]

7. In all honesty, it is terrorism. And all those that do not speak out and fight this...

are complicit actors.

I think it is worth leaving the country for. THAT is how strongly I feel about it.

Otherwise, you tell me how you can tell your kids that they are on the side of the good guys?

[MercutioATC]

10. So present a more favorable alternative.

Drones in the sky or Marines in the streets? From both our and their positions, the drones are the best choice.

We may have valid concerns with drone-based offensive protocol, but the solution is to change the procedures, not condemn the drones.

[Luminous Animal]

12. Have we declared war on Pakistan?

It looks like sending in the drones means we don't have to. And, from a Pakistani citizen's position, being terrorized on a daily basis it is clear that drones are not a "choice" but a deathly and terrifying, community destroying hell-hole.

[MercutioATC]

17. Has Pakistan officially declared this an act of war?

As I said, the protocol may be flawed but the technology is sound.

[joshcryer]

22. We were using their bases until 2011.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

[Luminous Animal]

23. What, and give up all those cool weapons we provide to their government?

The citizenry can surely recognize that they are under attack even if their leadership refuses to do so.

[99th_Monkey]

18. In a word B-L-O-W-B-A-C-K

Which is what we're seeing in the streets in the ME, which has MUCH more
to do with US war-mongering and crimes against humanity in the area than
it does with some stupid amateur video insulting Mohammad.

Hint: The video was the last straw, that unleashed a torrent of pent up rage
about how the US has been behaving in that region historically, and especially
recently with Iraq & Afghanistan ... 10+ years of illegal and criminal wars, as
well as these illegal drone strikes that kills and maims hundreds of civilians
who happen to be in the vicinity at the wrong time.

For every innocent civilian that dies, their whole family is impacted, just like
your family would react, with rage and hatred and a passion for justice.

[sabrina 1]

21. And the other alternative is to leave these countries alone. Why are we killing people all

over the world?? Supposing the Iraqis decided to get revenge on this country for killing over one million of its citizens for no reason at all, other than PROFITS for the Oil Cartels? Do you think they have the same right we do to go around the world killing people who did this to them? They think WE are the terrorists. In fact an awful lot of people think that now.

There's no War on Terror. We are doing all of this for Global Dominance of resources. And if it there is a WOT it's not working is it, if after 12 years we still haven't killed enough people and we are still in as much danger, MORE actually, than we were when this all started. But it never was about terror, so that's a moot point.

[polly7]

25. +1000.

[G_j]

28. is that people are now ok with war crimes?

Is that it?

[Comrade Grumpy]

32. How about neither drones nor Marines?

It's the other side of the freaking planet. Let's get out of there.

[cali]

14. It's even worse evidently, in Yemen.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

34. Yemen is a mess --

Those recent protests were pegged as being about the "anti-Muslin film" when they had as much, if not more, to do with the war (let's call it what it is, folks) we are waging there.

[KG]

24. gee, what if we had a leader that was a peace prize winner? oh, wait...

[KoKo]

27. In the Military Industrial Complex: "Peace is War--War is Peace"

Last edited Tue Sep 25, 2012, 01:37 PM - Edit history (1)

It seems this is the "new reality" that Karl Rove said they would write.

Sadly, it continues under our Democratic administration.

[Luminous Animal]

29. Kick.

[G_j]

30. kick

[Odin2005]

31. The Pashtuns in the tribal areas need to stop supporting the Taliban.

Then I might feel a bit more sympathetic.

[Comrade Grumpy]

33. It's their country, not yours. We need to get out of there.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

35. When did the "Taliban" become our enemy?

Seriously. I don't give a fuck about the Taliban. The Taliban is a local radical Islamist movement. Let Pakistan and Afghanistan figure out what they want to do about them.

[Odin2005]

36. When they coddled Osama.

[cpwm17]

38. Osama's dead, and we devistated a country to get a criminal

The US currently coddles worse criminals than Osama, and I certainly don't support anyone targeting military aged Americans, and anyone who happens to be nearby, for death. That's not how to run a civilized and just society.

[phantom power]

37. recommend

[Luminous Animal]

39. Kick.

[Wilms]

40. ^